Our World, Part IV

See, it's the unions that are lousing things up.

Unions Are Biggest Obstacle In Indie Film Production, Film Execs Say

Foreign film sales execs took aim at Hollywood guilds and unions at the Independent Film & Television Alliance Production Conference today, citing them as the biggest roadblocks in getting indie films made. “I get it that stars like Bruce Willis are getting paid the big money, they are the driving force behind these films getting made, but I don’t get the guys who pull cables that make $100,000 a year,” said Voltage Pictures president and CEO Nicolas Chartier ...

Do we find this surprising? The goddamn unions are bleeding the country dry. Just ask the co-president of Voltage Pictures. Because, as we all know, American workers are horribly overpaid. And American executives are chronically underpaid.

... American executives argue—conveniently enough—that their compensation should be compared to what other American executives are paid. This argument has tended to be persuasive to American boards, which—conveniently enough—are made up primarily of American corporate executives. And big American investment management firms—also led by American corporate executives—likewise think this makes sense. Which is all quite nice, but if you tried convincing one of these very same executives that he shouldn’t replace an American factory worker with a cheaper Chinese one, he would laugh you out of the room. ...

The thing of it is, the whole deal comes down to how much leverage you've got. And currently, the Chartiers of the world have a whole lot of juice to get what they want, which is more money for them and less for the cable pullers and others who don't really matter.

Clearly, they've been successful.

American workers who previously made up the wealthiest middle class in the world have lost that distinction, according to new research that attributes the economic stagnation on rising income inequality in the US.

Economic growth in the US continues to be as strong if not stronger than other developed nations, although fewer Americans are reaping the benefit of their hard work. An analysis of income and spending numbers published Tuesday by the New York Times indicated that the wealthiest tax brackets are enjoying more financial growth, while the lower and middle income tiers are now lagging behind their counterparts throughout the world.

Median income in Canada tied with median income in the US in 2010 and has likely surpassed that number since, according to the Times. Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and a number of Western European countries still trail US median income, although the margin is much narrower than any forecasters had previously predicted. ...

This "lag of income" thing. Could it have anything to do with our tax policies, corporate culture, and ... oh yeah ... the decline of labor unions?

Naaah.